Obamacare’s Premium Subsidies Will Stifle Small Business

As small business goes, so goes the economy. They have been responsible for creating almost two-thirds of all net new jobs over the last 15 years. Indeed, one reason Obamacare is such a concern is that it will significantly reduce the incentive for small businesses to hire. Especially once the premium subsidies become available in 2014.

The premium subsidies are Obamacare’s way of making health insurance more affordable for low-income earners who buy coverage in the new exchanges. Eligibility for a subsidy is limited to people who lack public or employment-based insurance and have incomes less than four times the poverty level. The values of the subsidies are set so as to limit the amount one contributes towards insurance as a percent of income.

The actual implementation, however, is complex.

Say you’re under 65 and not on Medicaid (or CHIP), and the year you would be eligible to purchase insurance through an exchange is 2014. Your premium subsidy is determined by your income and family structure from two years earlier (in this case, 2012), applied against the poverty level for the calendar year in which you purchase the insurance (2014).

The consequences of this complicated formula are far worse.

For instance, what if your income or family structure is different in 2014 than it was in 2012? Obamacare allows people to apply for “changes in circumstances” if they were married or had children in the interim. It also allows those who lose a job or expect to experience significant reductions in income (a decrease of 20 percent or more) to apply for an adjustment to their subsidy.

However, those who experience a significant increase in income will have to pay additional taxes equal to the amount of the overpayment in the premium subsidy for the tax year in which the credits are used to buy insurance. Originally, Obamacare capped the amount the IRS could collect at $400 a family. Congress increased that cap to pay for the most recent Medicare “doc fix” and then again to pay for the repeal of Obamacare’s 1099 reporting provision, giving the IRS authority to go after amounts as low as $600 for people making less than two times the poverty line, as high as $2,500 in overpayment for people making under four times the poverty line, and the entire value of the subsidy for those making more than four times the poverty line.

Does anyone experience large swings in income? Small business owners can experience a tremendous amount of year-to-year change in income. In fact, it’s easy to imagine a small business owner who qualifies for a tax credit to buy insurance in 2014 based on their income in 2012 and experiences a profitable year in 2014 only to owe the value of the tax credit (on top of their other taxes) in April of 2015, regardless of how well their business is doing by that time.

There are hundreds of thousands of taxpayers who rely on their small business income and would likely qualify for a tax subsidy that must consider the possibility that their incomes may jump, forcing them to pay back a large portion of the overpayment. This threat of a potentially large tax bill could induce many small-business owners who would likely qualify for premium subsidies to save money for the IRS rather than invest in their business or hire new employees.

Take an average small business owner qualifying for a premium subsidy – in their mid-40s, married, with two children, and a household income of about $60,000 in 2014. According to data from the Kaiser Health Reform Subsidy Calculator, their household will qualify for a premium subsidy of over $9,300 in 2014. However, since most small business owners have little way of planning how successful their business may be in any given year, they would be inclined to plan for the possibility of paying back the entire premium subsidy on top of the taxes they would already owe.

How will this influence her decision to hire new employees or invest in the business? Tax economists have studied how small business owners respond to changes in personal income tax rates. Based on the findings of those studies, the likelihood that the average business owner qualifying for the subsidies will hire new workers is reduced by about 70 percent.

As Sherk and Hederman note, the high unemployment is driven in large part by reservations of businesses to hire. Unfortunately, it seems that the Obamacare will do more to continue this trend as the economy struggles to recover.

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Stop ALL federal government healthcare now. This is a private sector function. Any public assistance can be provided by private sector non-profit organizations or state funding. The federal workforce does not have the wherewithal to accomplish such a large task like healthcare. Even if they were the best workers on the planet, managing EVERYONE’S healthcare in one single place is an impossible task. This problem is too big to fail. Moreover, the feds have been failing for decades! So let us do as the government did with banks. Break up the solution in smaller pieces (i.e. private sector companies and organizations) and get the feds out of it all!

At age 76, when you most need it, you won't be eligible for cancer treatment!

What Nancy Pelosi didn't want you to know until after the healthcare bill was passed. Remember, she said, "pass it and then read it!!"

Well, Here it is …

Obama Care Highlighted by Page Number

THE CARE BILL HB 3200

Please read this……..especially the reference to pages 58 & 59

** Page 50/section 152: The bill will provide insurance to all non-U.S. residents, even if they are here illegally.

** Page 58 and 59: The government will have real-time access to an individual's bank account and will have the authority to make electronic fund transfers from those accounts.

** Page 65/section 164: The plan will be subsidized (by the government) for all union members, union retirees and for community organizations (such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now – ACORN).

** Page 203/line 14-15: The tax imposed under this section will not be treated as a tax. (How could anybody in their right mind come up with that?)

** Page 241 and 253: Doctors will all be paid the same regardless of specialty, and THE GOVERNMENT will set ALL doctors' fees. Sounds exactly like Soviet Russia !

** Page 317 and 321: The government will impose a prohibition on hospital expansion; however, communities may petition for an exception. (Good Luck on this one)

** Page 425, line 4-12: The government mandates advance-care planning consultations. Those on Social Security will be required to attend an "end-of-life planning" seminar every fiveyears. (Death counseling..) (Oh How wonderful!)

** Page 429, line 13-25: The government will specify which doctors can write an end-of-life order.

Enough already! We all now "know what's in the bill". But just what will be done

to stop it? So far nothing but photo opts and sound bites. This bunch of Repbs in Congress are afraid of their own shadows and will not do nothing to jeopardize their seats. All of the fears we were told are actually in ObamaCare, but the Dems and the media continues to hide the facts and delibertly look into the camera and lie to American. Even if the Repbs will it all in 2012, we will still

have the same gutless bunch in power that will not stand for the people. We must have a conservative party to replace the Republicans.

This sounds like an arguement against the premium repayment thru taxes. It is a valid point that progressive tax is the enemy of small business Eliminating that isn't the solution.

Eliminating Obamacare, making actuarily sound with a phase out to private accounts for Social Security and Medicare subsidy for private insurance and the elimination of Federal funding and devolution to the States for Medicaid IS the answer.

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